Markdown Desktop Editors

Universal

Atom (FREE, open source)

Markdown Preview - to be done

Visual Studio Code (FREE)

to be done

Typora ($$, Free in beta)

Typora is a highly unique and powerful markdown editor. The most surprising and difficult to explain feature, is the in place live preview. In a nutshell as you type markdown it previews the text behind your cursor eliminating the need for a separate preview space.

In addition to including some very nice looking css based themes it also leverages the power of pandoc by using an intermediary format behind the scene allowing you to import and export to many popular document formats including.

The current version, 0.9.23-1, still has some minor bugs and the OS X version is still in beta but, wow, does it look great!

Zettlr ships with a lot of features helpful in writing markdown. It is especially aimed at writing research papers in the arts and humanities (and therefore offers writing aids such as automatic footnote insertion and in-place editing, or a global search). Nonetheless it also supports LaTeX and code highlighting, which makes it interesting for developers as well. It features a file tree, plenty of exporting options and even supports whole projects (exporting multiple markdown files at once), live preview directly in the editor, and some Zettelkasten functionalities that enables the linking of files. Tags can also be used to sort your work.

Linux

Retext
(github wiki: retext-project/retext,
github: retext-project/retext) -
ReText is a simple but powerful editor for markdown and reStructuredText markup languages.
ReText is written in Python language and works on Linux and other POSIX-compatible platforms.

MindForger
(web: mindforger.com) -
MindForger is free Markdown IDE and thinking notebook for Linux and macOS. Actually it is more than just a Markdown editor - it is Markdown IDE. With MindForger you can edit multiple documents, perform refactoring/cloning/extraction of sections, use document/section templates and more. It provides HTML preview with diagram, math support and source code syntax highlighting; cutomizable themes and dual pane interface.

UberWriter
(web: uberwriter.wolfvollprecht.de,
ubuntu apps: uberwriter) -
UberWriter, beautiful distraction free writing.
With UberWriter you get only one thing: An empty textbox, that is to fill with your ideas.
There are no settings, you don't have to choose a font, it is only for writing.
You can use markdown for all your markup needs. PDF, RTF and HTML are generated via pandoc.

Microsoft Windows

Markdown Monster
(web: markdownmonster.west-wind.com) -
Markdown is everywhere these days and it's used for all sorts of different purposes. Wouldn't it be nice if you have an editor that can keep up with all of those scenarios?

Markdown Monster is a Markdown editor and viewer that lets you edit Markdown with syntax highlighting and fast text entry. A collapsible, synced, live preview lets you see your output as you type. You can easily embed images, links, emojis and code as text or by using our gentle UI helpers that simplify many operations. You can also paste and drag images directly into the editor. Inline spell-checking and word counts keep your content streamlined unobtrusively.

You can export Markdown to HTML by saving to disk or by copying Markdown selections as HTML directly to the clipboard. The HTML preview can display syntax colored code snippets for most common coding languages, and can easily be customized with HTML and CSS template to match your own sites. You can choose from a light and dark theme, and choose individual editor and preview themes. You can even use Vim or EMacs type conventions. Other convenience features let you browse for and select files in the built-in folder browser, jump to the current folder in Explorer or Terminal, commit to Git and more.